Traffic information services allow users to make travel decisions based on current travel conditions. For example, traffic information services may display maps with color coded road segments representing the most recently identified traffic condition of each displayed road segment. Traffic information services may also provide a user with estimated travel times based on recent travel conditions as well as provide a user with the latest traffic events, such as traffic incidents, construction, and the like. While such services provide users with the most recently available traffic information, they do not provide predictive traffic information.
Today, as a result of the desire for predictive traffic information, more advanced traffic information services are developing to incorporate traffic predictions. The traffic predictions provide users with traffic information pertaining to a specific future instance. The existing predictive traffic information services, however, simply predict the traffic based on a specific time. For example, a user requesting predictive traffic information for 8:00 a.m. may receive a map displaying the expected traffic conditions at 8:00 a.m. for all road segments.
However, static predictive information, for one snapshot in time, may not be valid for the entire travel route and, accordingly, may prevent users from making an informed travel decision. For instance, a user may utilize a predictive traffic information service, prior to departure, to determine the predicted traffic at time A. As the user begins traveling, at time A, from origin to destination, the predictive information for the beginning of the route may be correct, but the remainder of the route, however, may become invalid due to the user's travel time (e.g., at time B, the user approaches a bottlenecked highway that was displayed as having a normal traffic flow at time A). As a result of the non-adaptive travel information, the user may plan a travel route based on a normal traffic flow predicted for a highway at time A, but at time B when the user approached the highway, the traffic was no longer moving.
In existing predictive traffic information services, for a user to receive predictive traffic information that adapts to a user's travel and is valid for the entire route, the user must estimate the time for arriving at multiple locations along the route and retrieve traffic information pertaining to the identified locations and corresponding estimated arrival times. Such estimation is error prone and may provide the user with inaccurate information. Further, estimating arrival times for multiple locations and retrieving corresponding traffic information may be tedious and time consuming. Consequently, users of traffic information services are not provided with accurate traffic information that is simply obtained.